Daddy Day – 2012

LOTS of pics and stuff to get through today.  Father’s Day around here means we ditch the kids for the most part, and shred some big vert in the South Okanagan.  We did manage to freak out mom here, by treeing her and her two cubs.

Quite a few dads came out for this one.  It’s always fun to open a beer, say “Here ya go Dad”, and see how many hands reach for it.  Oh, and our pal Chris from Merritt came along too.  He’s not a dad…yet…  That’s him on the left, and Jason is on the right riding one of my bikes. 

He looks pretty good on that rig.

Halfway down, and much hilarity has ensued.  We wrecked a chainsaw (watch for an upcoming vid with a chainsaw in manual mode), I had a wicked wreck, and conditions really could NOT be better.

I want you to note that strange material hanging in the air behind the riders.  Yes, in spite of the wettest June ever recorded, and overnight rain, there is dust on the trail.

Gotta love the desert in the springtime.

Oh, almost forgot…  Darcy finally brought Jordan up, and as he’s not a little kid anymore we thought we’d try him out on Cawston Creek.  He had a couple of small crashes, but overall he killed it.

Beer break with Dad…s.

Darcy and Jordan.  Probably the raddest Father/Son day ever.

Yeah dude.  I’d be smiling too.

Foote of course never stops smiling.  Just about the most stoked guy I’ve ever met.

A couple of heavily edited shots on the hoodoos.  Just playing with some camera settings.  I’ve taken so many pics here, I’m almost (but not quite) bored with it.

OK, that was just the warmup.  Time for round 2.  DING!

As is the usual when shredding with the crew, the pace has picked up as some riders dropped out for TKO.  Therefore I got relatively few shots.  We smashed off the first half of the trail, with no breaks until the big log ride.

Even at that, I barely had time to run back to get these few shots.

Hang it out, buddy! You’ll make it!

Halfway down, time to reset the brain.  The second half is way steep, so you gotta take it a lot less aggro than the 1st half.  Plus, it’s a nice view.

Not that it looks very steep here, but the colours are sure nice.

Whoa!  Who’s that handsome devil?

This next shot is special.  Not so much because it’s of me, or that Jason took it, but because it’s shot #10 000!  Yes that’s right.  There is now over 10k images on this site.  That should keep ya busy for a while.

OW!

Yeah, wettest spring ever.  I hear it stays pretty cloudy when it rains in Vancouver.  Here…not so much.

And another lame pic of scenery on the drive home.

Return of ANOTHER Stag

These guys came out a few years ago for the grand occasion of one of their crew getting married, and low and behold another soldier has fallen.

It’s Aaron’s turn this time, and since last time we rode we cracked off 8 runs on the Sunshine Coast I figured we should probably do a big vert day on Kobau.

As always, it’s dry as a bone out here.  So much so that I managed a pretty decent crash in my first run when I missed a small ramp at speed and flipped over some logs.  Good thing I had padding on for a change.

All crashing aside, it was a solid session of brown pow today.

My old coach and current boss at the Ski club was our driver today.  He’s never really been exposed to the reality of mountain biking before.  He was a bit shocked to say the least when he saw us shredding through the sage at high speed.  I think we may have a convert.

Round two got me yet another crash, and this time I got it good.  Forgot my pads for one, and also it was one of those ones when you tag your bars off a tree at high speed.  I got a gnarly hemaetoma on my right thigh, and lost a bunch of skin on my left knee and arm.  Crap.  At least I could still ride, but I did cry a little when nobody was looking.  That one hurt.

At least I’ve got conditions like this to keep my mind off the pain.

After two laps on Cawston Creek it was time for the finishing run on TKO.  I was thinking that with how dry it was that it was going to be ultra gnar and loose, but it was actually as good as I’ve ever seen it.  Truly an epic lap.  Even managed to forget how much the leg hurt.

Here’s the crew (minus one casualty from the first two.  Tired and beat up from the weekend).  I think we all crashed out pretty hard at one point today, but it was the sort of day for pushing limits.

Managed to get lost down lower too.  This run was way longer than it needed to be, but it was still pretty nice cruising game trails in the desert.

A final group shot at Hester Creek before bugging out.

Oh, and if you see this little BBQ hut in Oliver, you gotta drop in.  Unreal eats for cheap.  Can’t believe I’ve never stopped there before.

Way more pics here in this slideshow.  Enjoy…

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Manfest! – 1

Wow.    20 guys.   Yeah…20. 

So many to take care of that I forgot to bring a camera.  Maybe if Felix sees this he’ll remember to send some of the ones he took today. 

Anyway, it was a rad day.  We slayed a bunch of vert and had a ball.  Good crew.  I’ve got lots of pics for the next two days, so that should keep everyone happy.

Here’s a random shot from 2004 from the same area we rode today, just so you’ve got something to look at.

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